Trials of the Heart
by Hylander McLeod
Summary: AU. Tomoe survives but the peace between Kenshin and her is shattered. Kenshin leaves. Tomoe is devastated. Can their love survive? Can they ?


Disclaimer- Rurouni Kenshin is property of Watsuki

Summary- Having given up all other ways to make sister happy, Enishi decides to reunite Tomoe with her second love.

* * *

Yukishiro Enishi was not pleased. Two days they had searched. Two days since he had guided his sister back to Kyoto, in search of that red-haired assassin she had come to love. He had hoped several times she would drop such foolishness but it seems his hopes have been doused. Her longing for that man would not cease and her love for him could not be broken. And so they were here, amidst the chaos and bloodshed searching for one Himura Kenshin.

Getting back to Kyoto had been easy. Compared to finding the one Tomoe loved.

For two days straight now, they had searched. Searched to no avail. Had the Choshu gone underground to avoid all detection?

The hour was now late, as the sun was setting. He was about to suggest they give up for today, when something caught his attention. The red hair tied in a pony tail. He had wanted to get closer, when his sister gripped his arm.

He looked at her. Tomoe simply shook her head.

He looked at her, puzzled. Did she not come to find him? Perhaps …..

"He will sense us" she whispered. "We cannot get too close."

Enishi nodded, understanding. Still with the clouds forming as they were, it looked as if rain were to start soon, and he had no desire to be caught in it.

He followed. So did his sister.

After sometime Himura had slowed to a stop. Had he noticed them?

Gathering a few pebbles that he picked up on the road to Kyoto Enishi threw one. It hit the red haired man in the back.

He threw another. And another.

No response.

Enishi clenched his fists. If there was no other way to get his attention …

He came here to make his sister happy. And hew would make her happy.

Taking a deep breath he called "OY TEME!"

The man twitched.

Enishi ran toward him umbrella raised.

* * *

Kenshin whirled around, his right arm grasping the hilt of his katana. The sword was halfway unsheathed when he'd noticed the one calling to him.

Yukishiro Enishi. Tomoe's brother stood a few feet before him a familiar umbrella clutched overhead.

"What are you doing here?" he asked. The night was long and he was tired. "I told you go back to Edo."

_If Enishi's here then his sister is too. _

The boy simply ignored him and kept hitting him with the umbrella.

"How long do intend to make nee-san suffer?" he cried.

Kenshin blinked. _Tomoe was suffering. Why? _

Hadn't he done what was right? To bear the burden and guilt of what he had stolen from her? What he bereft her of?

"You're cruel." Enishi cried. "Saying those promises and then leaving her like that. She's already tried to kill herself twice."

"ENISHI, ENOUGH!."

The two of them turned around

_Tomoe_

It had been her. The woman he had fallen in love with on that cold night in January.

With slow steps, as if she were but a gliding phantom, she walked past her brother inching closer towards him.

"Kenshin … anata …. I've found you again."

He remained frozen on the spot. His body would not move.

She was here ….. for him? She had been looking? Why?

"Tomoe …?"

His voice had left him. He could not find the words. Surprise had befell him. Surprise and relief. A longing that he had tried to quench, to hide deep within him, slowly found its way outward, etching itself onto his face.

Two months. It had been nearly two months since he had last seen her. His mind drifted back on that snowy morning to when the peace they had shared, the glimmer of hope she provided him with, before all of it came crashing down.

* * *

He had not returned back that evening, presumably choosing to stay in that forest, where he had taken so many blows, received countless wounds all because Tomoe had left him. Days had passed until Katsura, as Tomoe had called him, had arrived in search of the young warrior. She had when Kenshin appeared, in better shape than he had been in that fateful morning, but nonetheless worse for wear, panting and out of breath.

"_We were discovered__**" **_were the first words he had spoken to the Choshu clan leader. "_I've __been watching in case more would show up__**."**_

Tomoe' eyes widened. He did not speak of the plot on his life or that she or her brother had both been agents of the Shogunate both sent to ensure his destruction. Or at least she had been. While Enishi may have been brought in against her wishes she herself was the willing one, one directly responsible. She plotted to bring about his own death and yet he …

The sound of footsteps brought her out of her musings.

The two men retreated outside to resume their conversation.

She could not hear the exchange between them , both voices to low to reach her ears. At least until …..

"I should have known."

She gasped. She could practically see Kenshin's face, the steely look of his eyes, in that instance.

It wasn't the voice of the young man, of the husband she came to known.

No this voice clearly belonged to the assassin.

"No. Leave Iizuka to me. I owe him something."

Tears threatened to spill from Tomoe's eyes. That voice again. No doubt Katsura had arranged for another to deal with the traitor. After living in such relative peace Kenshin would be unable to revert to his assassin's persona without faltering. Yet the way Kenshin spoke, to be trusted with one task, it was more than another assignment, another killing. It was personal. It was vendetta.

She moved away from the door, instead to prepare a meal. Should could not bear to listen any longer.

Night had fallen. They ate in silence during that day, both their heads bowed, unable to look at each other.

She slept beside her brother night, on the double futon that had been rolled out for the past few days. He resumed his usual pattern of sleep, taking a sitting position by the door, knees drawn upward, both arms clutching the wakizashi that rested against his shoulder.

When she awoke the next morning, the young man was already dressed, the katana and wakizashi secured on his waist. The door of their cottage was slightly ajar.

Something was in his hand. Something he was giving to Enishi

"This money should see you through to Edo." he said handing the bagful of coins to the younger boy..

He turned to leave, not sparing a glance at the woman he lived with for 6 months, when he felt a tug on his hakama. Tomoe had latched on to his right leg with both arms, a sad, lonesome expression on her face. _Don't leave me _ she had wanted to say, to beg him to allow her to stay with him, yet she found her voice failing her. She had wanted to cry out to him, to voice her feelings, not caring who hears, and yet even as she wished to her lips would not, not speak the words her heart was crying out. Unable to voice her desire aloud, she glanced at him with that same expression, with those same eyes, she did when she stopped him from fighting the shinsengumi squad just behind the inn, desperately hoping he would see through to their meaning.

He turned to look at her, the same sad smile, the one he had given her when that fateful morning

Fishing into the folds of his haori he produced the top he had often played with, the one she had seen the first morning she spent in his room. The room he brought her to, when she fainted into his arms the night they first met.

"If my parents hadn't bought me this, could they have had the money to buy medicine that would save their lives?"

The shock returned to her face and her hold on him loosened involuntarily. Taking advantage of the situation, Kenshin used the moment to step out of her reach. The top he was holding fell at her feet. Closing the shoji door behind him, he returned to the battlefield his footsteps fading further and further away from the cottage.

Time seemed to stop as Tomoe lay motionless on the floor. Panic and sadness gripped her heart.

He left her. Rather than kill her for her betrayal he instead chose to leave her bereft of her happiness yet again.

She cannot take anymore. The dam breaks within her, and although she is silent as ever, crystalline tears flow from her eyes. She does not bother to stop them.

She cries

She is alone again.

* * *

It was a rather cold morning in January. The sun was shining but bore no warmth. A lone man was walking down the road, a bundle of coins in his hands.

"I suppose I'd better leave before I'm found out." He muttered.

It would all be over. By now the boy would be dead and Katsura's great revolution finished. Ideals of war were not something he bore an interest in. He played with the coins in his palm, tossing them slightly. Money was much more reliable.

"Leaving without so much as a goodbye, Iizuka?"

He spun around facing the one who had spoken. He tried to hide his shock.

_The kid wasn't dead? _

This was not good_. _He knew the boy couldn't be bargained with. If glory wouldn't have baited him, money would be even less effective. And yet …

The boy's skills could have been weakened. Shacking up with that woman had driven the murderous instinct out of him. He had seen the way his eyes shown, the softness there as he "lived" a simple lifestyle. As well as the shock when the boy learned of Tomoe's true nature.

The gleaming look now returned; not the look of a killer but something more. His emotionless mask had dropped. Having found peace, no matter how brief, the boy could not fight at full strength, the strength of an assassin.

This was personal. This he could do.

The boy's emotional state would prove vulnerable.

"Kenshin-"

The blow came without instantly and without warning. Iizuka was dead before his corpse hit the ground.

Completing the task the red haired young man sheathed his blade. He stared coldly down at the body.

"Now you know why I am called Battousai"

* * *

Days came and went, with no change in her condition. She remained motionless where she had, in that same place, until that first nightfall, glancing at the door which her love had walked out of. The next morning she had not risen from her bed until mid afternoon, and only at her brother's insistence that she eat something, least she starves.

Enishi had tried several times, to convince her to return with him to Edo, to not give another moment to that dreaded assassin and let fate deal him his blow. His words failed to reach her. She carried on as a living ghost, not leaving the cottage, rarely eating and hardly saying a word. On some days she would the top, the one Kenshin left behind, keeping it in her grasp as she slept through the nights, holding on to the one figment she had left of the red haired young man who had healed her tattered soul, and whose own she healed as well.

It was only when interrupting her in mid suicide, her tanto against the flesh of her wrist, for a second time, he stopped persisting. He wrenched the knife out of her grasp, hugging his sister in comfort. He looked at her near dead expression, the perfect face devoid of all signs of life, so unlike the way she had been when first found her.

His sister's happiness meant the world to him.

"_Okay, we'll go find him then._ _I don't want you to cry anymore nee-san."_

Tomoe raised her head from its downed position to meet his eyes. She smiled.

They had left the next day, making the journey.

And now they stood face to face, mere inches between them.

The assassin had been angry when they first found him, insistent upon their return home.

Hearing Tomoe speak, her say his name, had changed that.

Enishi could not believe the astonished look that possessed the red haired youth- the same identical look upon the features of his sister.

"Kenshin" she whispered letting her arms fall to the side "Kenshin I am with child. _Our child. Your child."_

He resisted the urge to embrace her. "Tomoe I am not worthy of you. Not after what I …. what I did … your fiancé … I-"

"Shhh" She placed her fingers to his lips. "Aren't I just as unworthy myself?"

He had wanted to speak, to say she wrong, that one such as her could not be unworthy of anyone, yet so often as was the case, when in her presence, he found his voice lacking.

He had loved Tomoe. He loved her still.

Yet he still felt himself undeserving. Undeserving of that love, and peace she had given. Undeserving of her.

She had come to Kyoto with a plot to end bring about his demise. Her fiancé fell to his sword and her heart grew bitter and cold with cry for vengeance.

He was a killer suffering in his own reality until she helped him escape. She brought light back into his life, made him feel better about himself, made him feel human. Those months he shared with her in that cottage were the most calm and peaceful in years.

She was his first love, one that betrayed him and, as far as he thought, rightfully so. What claim does a murderer have upon love, having stolen the life of one his beloved loved prior. Having killed the fiancé of the one he now loves ?

He was her second. In her carefully planned attempt of revenge he had brought the fire back into her soul, healing her just as she had had healed him. Through those months of deceit and of plotting she had managed to see past his hated exterior. She saw the caring young man, the child forced to grow up too soon, the husband she wanted to have.

She could not bring about his destruction

They were caught in a tailspin.

She could not bear to watch him die.

He could not bear to watch her suffer.

He had left feeling he was very much undeserving, having stolen the one precious gift life had given her. Having wanted to protected the weak and innocent, he had given no though to those caught in crossfire, those who had either been unaware of the travesty of death having lived so far distantly from it or were simply doing

It was not to end there.

He left as he thought he was unworthy. She thought he left as penance for her deception. With yet one more chance at happiness ripped from her grief replaced it, and the pain this time was far more intense then compared to the first. In the passing of weeks that followed she had slowly and surely, with each passing hour, lost more and more will to live. Resembling a living ghost, only her brother's devotion, though he failed to grasp why his sister had loved such a man, prevented her passing. He kept her tied to this world, with his love, and when it proved failing, by reuniting her with one whom her heart cried out for. The one, who despite all he had done to her, she now loved.

"Can't we try? Not for our sake but the sake of our child, can't we please try?"

His defenses broke down and he embraced her passionately tears running down his own cheeks as well. "Oh Tomoe" he whispered "no matter how much I can give you our past- it still haunts me. I-" he looked at her the tears still flowing. "What is to become of us Tomoe?"

Tomoe, for her part, had no answer. None that she could voice at least. Instead she brought her hands forward and cupped the boy's face bringing her own her own mere inches from his. Their eyes closed as their lips sought out each other amidst the rain which began to fall silently. After several minutes locked in kiss and embrace, words of passion, words they both felt but never had said, fell from their lips simultaneously.

Watching them from the distance, Enishi smiled. And he knew, somehow, his sister and one she now loved smiled as well.

* * *

I had run into so many dead ends in this. First it was the point of view's. I had tried to keep it I once but found that I couldn't. So I had separated them into different one's parts of the story being told from different perspectives. didn't write up the full conversation between Kenshin and Tomoe because I simply didn't know how to do so, so I just have bits and pieces.

So finally the prequel to Heart's tribulations is up.

If you're still following my Constellations series I'm hoping to add that up in a few weeks time. (amending the first chapter slightly.)

Translations

Teme- a rude version of you (closer to you bastard)

haori- japanese style jacket (usually worn over a kimono)

hakama- japanese traditional pants

anata- dear or beloved (woman to a husband)

wakizashi- a short sword usually accompanying the katana


End file.
